Technical Debt Remediation Plan

Overview

Technical Debt Remediation Plan turns a vague "this code is a mess" complaint into a concrete, scored document. It only produces the plan, never the code change, which makes it useful for a backlog grooming session or a proposal you need sign-off on before touching anything.

How it works

1. It scores the debt on three 1-5 scales: ease of remediation (how hard the fix is), impact (how much it affects code quality) and risk (what happens if it's left alone), using color-coded icons for risk level.
2. It writes the plan with fixed sections: overview, explanation of the problem and fix approach, requirements, ordered implementation steps and how to test the result.
3. It recognizes common debt patterns by name, like missing test coverage, outdated dependencies, ineffective design patterns and leftover TODO/FIXME markers, so the analysis maps cleanly to a category.
4. Before creating a new GitHub issue, it searches existing issues first so debt items don't get duplicated, and applies the repository's chore request issue template when one exists.
5. It keeps the output short on purpose. The instructions call for concise, actionable recommendations rather than long explanations, so a plan is quick to review and approve.

Examples

"We have three different date-parsing utilities scattered across the
codebase. Write a remediation plan for consolidating them."

The agent returns a summary table (ease: 2, impact: 3, risk: 🟡) plus a detailed plan with the consolidation steps and how to verify nothing breaks, without touching any files.

Installation

You need VS Code with the GitHub Copilot extension.

1. Create the agents folder and download the file into your repo:

   mkdir -p .github/agents
   curl -o .github/agents/tech-debt-remediation-plan.agent.md \
     https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/awesome-copilot/main/agents/tech-debt-remediation-plan.agent.md
   

2. Reload VS Code, or open a new Copilot Chat; custom agents under .github/agents/ are picked up automatically.
3. Pick this agent from the mode picker in Copilot Chat and describe a piece of debt to confirm it returns a scored plan instead of editing files.